Middle Ages: Child of the Seas
by Fey or Fi
Summary: Heloise Roy is a daughter of Poseidon living in 1420s Europe. She's the hero of her generation, but she has yet to prove it, and she's only got a few months left.
1. Chapter 1

Heloise Roy, a daughter of Poseidon, sprinted up the steps of the Manor, the skirt of her simple, cherry red dress swinging around her ankles, and the braided leather cord that held her knife and quiver in place bounced at her hip. On her feet, she wore leather shoes with soft leather soles, which would have been covered by the hem of her dress if she had been standing still. Her light brown curls braided intricately against her scalp, she looked rather elegant compared to most commoners.

Even Heloise's movements were elegant, something most of her companions worked hard for, but hers were not at all rehearsed. She had a natural grace, and without trying, she could make a fight into a dance.

This was what Heloise had come to the Manor for. Recently, she'd been avoiding it, as the new "director" was horrid in her opinion, but she'd grown tired of only archery and the occasional knife fighting. Heloise wanted to learn next about the sword.

Heloise had seen the boys practicing with their swords; both kinds. In this time, the excuse that they were knights of some sort, usually lower ranked ones, was acceptable. But the first thing the girls had learned was how to properly dump flaming oil and... stool out of a bucket.

"What now, Heloise?" The training instructor sighed. The first few times Heloise had pestered him, he'd been convinced to let the girls learn to fight, and while he had no issues pertaining to this, it was socially unacceptable to the extreme.

Heloise's excited, large, green and blue swirled eyes met his wise, old, squinted brown ones and he grimaced. Unlike her half brothers, there was nothing frightening at all about Heloise.

"Can I learn sword-fighting, Maitre Chiron, si il vous plaît?" Heloise pleaded. Chiron closed his eyes and pinched his nose, rising from his seated position to a standing one, where he towered over Heloise, as he was half horse, a centaur. He debated for a few moments, flitting in between telling her to leave him be while he made a decision, or scolding her for calling him her master, a habit she'd fallen into as a young child growing up with her mother in a village in France.

"Heloise," he began, having finally decided on scolding her, something that rarely ever happened. "I have told you many times not to call me 'master'. I am simply a guardian of sorts. Leave me be for a few moments so that I can decide without the influence of any of your persuasion techniques."

Heloise paused for a moment, checking over his words for any riddles, questions, loopholes, or phrases that didn't match up, as he had both seen and heard her do before. If Chiron had not been so accustomed to Heloise, he would not have noticed the pause before she grinned and looked up at him, telling him with a slight triumphant edge to her voice "I didn't call you 'master', I called you 'maître'."

Chiron sighed again, something he found himself doing often when Heloise was nearby, a trait Heloise seemed to think was a major part of his character, as when she impersonated him behind his back, she liked to sigh after each word.

"Bonne nuit, Heloise," he finally told her, in the thick, British accent he'd developed in the last fifty years. Heloise's own accent was just as thick, a broad, strange combination of the soft French one and the British words, sounding alien to new ears.

Heloise, still as excited as before, scrambled to and from a curtsy of sorts before rushing out the door and into the courtyard, making her way through the maze of doors on the other end to find the archway opening on the left of the Manor, where the girls' hall was built.

The girls' hall, on the left of the Manor, was the same size as the boys' hall, on the right of the Manor, though it had significantly less occupants than the boys' hall did. The reason for this was because the girls' hall was split in half. The first half was taken up by the washing well, where the girls all worked on Saturday to wash all the clothes in the entire Asylum, as it was known to the rest of the world, the other taken up by rows and rows of wooden bed frames with straw mattresses on them, the space where the girls slept.

The Asylum was known to some as a correction asylum for demonic children, and while none of the children there were truly demonic in any way, they had often seemed to be, by speaking to spirits from war, or saying that they'd seen creatures with only one eye, or something similar to that. It was then that Chiron would take them in, using the Mist to disguise himself as a wandering priest of sorts.

They would end up happy in the asylum, because that was were they belonged, with people who were truly like them. Demigods, children of the Greek gods from a few thousand years of them arrived as green as could be, horrified that they were to be taught about _other_ gods. Their non-believing state was what had gotten them sent to the Asylum, after all.

At this point in time, there was no way for them to know about the Greek gods before hand, no ancient Greek pottery that had been discovered and studied for information. The gods themselves visited from time to time, teaching their children about their entire culture and the world that would later become mythology. The children created their _own_ pottery, telling about their lives and what they'd done to help mankind, and about the quests that were occasionally issued. Over half a century, Chiron collected pot after pot, and as he did he accumulated the very _lives_ of the children he'd watched over. The lives of heroes, and the hero of this generation:

Heloise Roy, Daughter of Poseidon

* * *

**Note: I don't own Percy Jackson, though I'll probably make up a bunch of characters who are referenced to throughout the story. ~El**


	2. Chapter 2

It was the next day that Chiron's decision was set in stone: he would let Heloise learn to fight, but not alongside the boys just yet. Heloise still needed to learn that though she was the strongest of the girls, and the most willing to break the rules, the boys would be even stronger, and the world outside of the Asylum wouldn't tolerate her ways for even a moment. Chiron would not give her a sword; the scribes who came to check on the Asylum every other month were obligated to report it immediately.

But Chiron knew that the armory that was kept locked and chained up every month was actually easier for Heloise than the boys to get to, being closer to the girls hall by at least two minutes of running. It was Athena who had insisted on this, thinking that the girls had the weaker force with fewer people than the boys did, and therefore needed to get to the weapons first. Chiron thought that this was hasty logic, but not wanting to anger the goddess, he kept silent.

Heloise would not start her training this month. While the visits of the scribes were short (they usually feared the "demonic" children), they were always different and unpredictable, and sometimes the younger ones liked to return, thinking that they needed more information. Chiron would don his false legs that Hephaestus had created for, and the boys would dress in stiffer clothing, and the girls in all of their chemises, kirtles, and surcoats. Hunting boots and soft slippers were exchanged for embroidered, delicate shoes, and while everyone's attire was more complicated, it was simple compared to most's standards.

This time, the scribe was a young one, a boy named Simon Claymore. At first, he only took a few looks around, taking in the stone walls and the sullen faces of the children. He didn't realize that their slight frowns were really because of him.

Simon looked as if he was staring at each child separately, not afraid of any of them. Then he got to Heloise.

If the other children scared him, he might have died from the force of her glare. She faced him directly, with a boldness he did not expect from a girl. She stared him in the eyes, as if telling him that he didn't belong there, that he should leave. He shivered. One thing was certain: the Asylum was not what he had expected.

Simon had expected a strong fortress with tall, menacing towers, like in fairy tales, with the children in cells, not a manor with clean stone walls and warm beds for them to sleep in every night. He thought they would have lived on bread and water, but they had obviously been eating a healthy assortment of vegetables and meats, with fine breads, cheeses and spice cakes. One man had obviously indulged quite a bit of wine. Their clothes were clean, well made, not the rags he had imagined. Simon decided to stop making judgements.

The room was put together nicely. Simon had counted almost fifty children, forty eight of them, with thirty one boys and seventeen girls. Though the number of boys nearly doubled the number of girls, Simon thought that girls should have been well trained, brought up to follow the wills of those higher than them. They should not be demonic by nature, they should be modest and well behaved.

As Simon observed the children, he noticed things that were wrong with the story of the Asylum. The children didn't look demonic. They didn't mutter of spirits or of monsters, they didn't summon objects, they sat and stood politely in designated spots. They were still, calm, but Simon thought that they must have been itching to go outside.

Once he'd tallied the number of children, the priest took him down a hall to examine the armory, pantry and kitchens.

Simon was not aware of the fact that the calm, quiet children he had left in the other room were stretching, twisting around to loosen muscles, and talking to their friends with a range of emotions. He was not aware of the training the children went through every other week of their lives. He didn't know the priest was actually a centaur. He didn't even know the priests name. He didn't need to. He just needed to do the mathematics and count their supplies, then return with his observations.

Simon left after about half a day, and Iris alerted them, telling them that he would not be returning. He felt that he had finished his job, and that the officials would be happy with his reports.

The children always enjoyed that news. They would scurry away, desperate to return to their light, cool clothing instead of the stuffy, too-warm getup they were wearing. They would draw their swords, knives, bows, or daggers and begin to practice fighting and surviving in the world they were stuck in.

Heloise was standing and practicing next to Alice, a girl who was from England, unlike herself, and Ida, a girl who had been brought to the Asylum at a very early age. Alice was a short little girl who always seemed confused and sleepy, a daughter of Hypnos. Ida, the opposite of Alice was always alert, too smart for her own good, as a daughter of Athena. Both of them were older than her, by at least two years, but Heloise _was_ the youngest girl there, almost twelve. The other girls were fifteen or sixteen, and it didn't bother Heloise.

She was no longer considered a wimp, no longer dared to challenge other children. She was considered an equal by both the girls and the boys, and she wasn't babied by the others. Heloise was her own person, and she still needed training, but it didn't matter in the end.

She would go on her quest anyways.


	3. Chapter 3

Three months later, Heloise was bundling an extra dress into a cloth that also held spice cakes, dried meat and an extra flask, which would supply her for about a week. Almost anything else would go bad, and she could hunt once the dried meat had been eaten.

Heloise was awed that the gods and Chiron thought she was ready for a quest, the first one in nearly forty years. At first, she'd thought her quest was fairly straightforward. She had to find the Master Bolt, and return it before the winter solstice. Then Heloise looked deeper. She would be traveling in the cold; winter was not a traveler's friend. Most likely it would snow. She would face monsters, and if the prophecy she was given wasn't as complicated as Chiron told her, she would kill a demigod, too.

_...You shall bring the thief's final breath..._

The gods were certain that the thief was a demigod. No god could take another's weapon of power, ad Heloise imagined that it would be especially hard to steal Zeus's.

Chiron had told her many times that history liked to repeat itself. This worried Heloise; she pitied the person who would have to find the Master Bolt next time Zeus lost it. She hoped that they would have more time than she did. Two weeks, then she had to have been at the Stonehenge, far from the Asylum, and finally, London, where she could then meet with the gods. Right then, she was in the north, near the wall built by the Romans, Hadrian's Wall. Heloise looked down at her horse, Splott. Not creative, but it rolled off her tongue easily.

"We have a long way to go, don't we?" she told him. He snorted, and in her head she heard him say "_Of course._"

* * *

The first time the pair stopped to rest was when the sun went down. They'd traveled about thirty miles, and Splott was done for the day. They needed to set up camp, and make sure that no monsters could eat them while they slept or rested. At this rate, it would take them about ten days to make it to Stonehenge, the entrance to the Underworld.

Since they were in the middle of the forest, Heloise wasn't sure how to set up a safe camp. Could she sleep in a tree? What did she do with Splott?

She decided to start with a small fire, to create as little smoke as possible. She ate a few chunks of the dry meat, probably salted pork or boar, and half a spice cake, which she put over the fire to heat it. It didn't look particularly appetizing, but she ate it anyway, and it was too hot to make out any particular flavor. It was a bit softer and fiber-y than usual, a result also brought on when Roger had dropped the entire batch into the oven. She resolved to eat it plain from then on.

Heloise still had to contemplate how to set up camp. Could she simply sleep on the ground? She decided that that was good enough, and packed up her supplies, then lay down and went to sleep.

Heloise rose again the next morning, riding for only an hour before stopping to defeat the hellhound chasing them. Heloise dismounted, untying her bow from the saddle frantically as the hellhound got closer. The first dozen arrows missed, and Heloise dodged away from the dog's teeth and claws. But Heloise kept firing, arrow after arrow lodging itself in the trees around her, and finally, an arrow had managed to pierce its fur, and then all that was left was sand, mixed into the dirt near the trail, and the pair continued on their journey.

It was another four or so hours before Heloise and Splott stopped again. They were no longer in the forest, but instead on the edge of a field, where they would have less cover. Ducking back under the cloak of trees that had hidden her so far, Heloise started to prepare her campsite. She lit a fire, cleared a space for herself to sleep...

She dreamed about the Underworld that night. She recognized it; she'd had the same dream of her mother being put into the Fields of Asphodel for a year after she'd died. It had been all Heloise's fault...

It was not the same dream however. Heloise could see two layers to it, one with herself, and one with a trio, two demigods and a satyr, as they explored the Underworld, stopping at the edge of Tartarus. The satyr nearly fell in, and Heloise fought with another demigod there, though in the dream, she couldn't see his face. As the dream continued, the demigods and the satyr moved on, but Heloise stayed. Her dream didn't show why, because just then, she woke up.

* * *

**Note: Should I include how her mother died? If anyone's curious, ****I might. ~El  
**


	4. Chapter 4

The first thing she noticed were the red eyes, surrounding her at her left, right, and ahead of her. To her back was a tree, which she'd hung her pack from.

The creatures with the red eyes - she wasn't sure what they were - growled at her as she reached up. Everything she'd bought with her was in that bundle, including the few arrows she had left. If she could reach it, she had one arrow for each monster, and if she couldn't, she would be an easy meal.

Splott had run, Heloise noted. While he was a loyal, semi-magical horse, he was still a horse, and natural instinct overpowered any connection his brain might have made towards staying put. If she survived and couldn't find him, she would have no transportation and she would fail her quest, something she had sworn to herself she wouldn't do.

She jumped, reaching for her supplies, only managing to slightly uncork the flask strung on the branch next to her bow. Water dripped onto her fingers, only enough to rejuvenate her but not enough to manipulate. After all, Poseidon was the god of the sea, it was the nymphs who embodied the water itself. She woulds have needed a lake of some sort to be able to do anything.

Heloise hadn't been allowed to bring any weapons except ones used for hunting. If she had brought a blade and been found by mortals, she would have been killed without a second thought. Only men (normally the ones in the military) carried blades. She had only what she could find around her. A rock, maybe, though she doubted it would be effective.

She picked it up anyways, moving slowly, trying to attract less attention from the monsters. She threw it, slightly crouched with her knees bent and still hunched over, and it flew only a few feet, still enough to distract the creatures and give her a moment in which she started to climb the tree, settling onto the branch above her bow, the _things_ below her still growling and grumbling up at her. She hoped that they didn't know how to climb.

Still moving slowly, she hung from her branch, reaching down to her pack, missing the first few times before she managed to catch it between her index and her thumb, a little corner that she could drop so easily...

She didn't, and once she had her arrows, she reached for her bow, praying to Apollo and Artemis for good aim, just once. What little skill she did have was the product of nearly three years of constant practice, and her confidence was not high. It had taken her a year alone to have the arrow even shoot in the direction of the targets.

Her hands shook, and she nearly fell from her seat, wobbling dangerously. For a long moment she could envision herself falling, her arms spread to catch herself before her head hit a rock and the creatures caught her. The panicked feeling in her stomach rose, and she doubted that she could hit even one of them. She had only managed to hit a moving target once, that one hellhound that she'd managed to hit after nearly twenty shots.

The first and second monsters, she managed to hit. The third followed after the longest moment Heloise had managed to be careful for, readjusting her arms in small twitches that she was sure looked like that time Hugh had managed to shock both himself and Edgar at the same time.

Now Heloise just needed to find Splott. She called with both her mind and her voice.

_Splott! _

"Splott!"

She had found three ponies who had run away from their masters and a wild boar (which she took as a coincidence) before she found Splott, who was wandering in the field. She hadn't managed to go very far, that day.

* * *

The next morning she woke to the sound of snow crunching. She shivered, brushing the flakes on the back of her surcoat, which had slipped from her shoulders during the night, a result of having accidentally loosened the knot that held it together the night before. Heloise had remained directly at Splott's side since they'd stopped, making sure he didn't wander off. Heloise felt paranoid, but she supposed it would pay off eventually.

The snow wasn't very deep, about ankle level, and her boots easily protected her feet, though she would have expected the cord that tied the side together to let some snow in.

Heloise and Splott rode for four hours before Heloise noticed signs of a town, which seemed rather lively compared to the ones she and Chiron had stopped in three years before on their way to the Asylum. In fact, the only place that wasn't shoved full of people seemed to be the pub. 'Perhaps they had bad ale,' Heloise thought to herself, not curious enough to go in and try it.

Heloise didn't spend very long in the town, just long enough to buy some rye bread, plums, and cheese, but she decided to stop there again on her way back. Leaving, she passed by the pub again, and still, no one had entered. By the time she had reached the post she'd left Splott at, she noticed that no one had left either.

The pair continued on, leaving the fields and reentering forest, which Heloise was glad for, and had been hoping for, instead of the open, cold field she'd encountered the last two days. The trees here would give protection against the snow, and less snow meant more chance to survive the night, and not end up packed into a large lump of ice and snow.

The snow influenced nightmares, flashes of Geoffrey's purple face and blackened fingertips when they'd found him outside after a small blizzard, William's right hand which had lost control over four fingers, and how he would never be able to use them again. The sound of Joan's too-slow breathing after she'd caught hypothermia, her shaking voice as she asked what was happening. Heloise remembered the row of shrouds that was burned every spring, the people who were celebrated for their heroic deeds before they died for stupid reasons, like that they'd patched the walls wrong, or they'd decided to sneak out to train even though it was still snowing.

Heloise, wrapped in layers of fabric and curled up next to her fire, could only hope that she didn't end up frozen the next morning.

* * *

**Note: Should I include the rest of her trip or skip to where she finds the thief? Comments would be appreciated. ~El**


End file.
